6. Julian Robertson

In these days of crashing hedge funds and a parade of Bernie Madoffs being led to jail, it is hard to believe that anyone in the hedge fund business ever had any success without being crooked. But some have—especially Julian Robertson. In 1980, Robertson took an $8 million startup, Tiger Management Corp., and built it into a world-renowned hedge fund that had made more than $20 billion by the end of the 1990s. According to Forbes, in 2008 Robertson was worth $1.8 billion. Perhaps his best decision was his choice of when to get out of managing other people’s money, which he did in 2000 as the tech bubble began to show signs of dying and his fund’s returns, which were as high as 25 percent for Tiger clients, started to sag. Robertson also predicted the current credit debacle, and nobody listened. So now, he just works for one client: Julian Robertson. And he seems to be performing well.